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Crafting with…Courtney! Episode 44: “The Big Picture!”

Hello everyone, and welcome to the forty fourth episode of “Crafting with…Courtney!” I’m here to make crafting fun, easy, and good for you!

Cannith crafting isn’t just about making something nice…it’s about making a whole bunch of nice things! If you put in the time and effort, Cannith crafting can help you quickly equip all sorts of gear as you level up. Fancy merchants and motivational speakers call it “synergy.” It has something to do with a group of things adding up to be better as a whole. I don’t know much about fancy words like that, but I love the idea of crafting lots of stuff! That’s why today’s column is a look at “the big picture!”

The Inventory:

Now, before we get begin, I want to make it clear that this isn’t a “here’s what you need to make for your character” list, or a “here’s the best stuff” list. Instead, this is an example of the kind of gear-building you can do as you level up! In reality, you’ll be carrying a bunch of stuff while adventuring. It’ll probably be a mix of things you craft, things you find, and things you buy/trade for. Today, though, let’s stick to just the “things you craft” list, and make an entire gear layout for a “generic” level 3 character getting started in Stormreach!

A quick note about the whole “gear for a level 3 character” thing: I’m not including items that you could equip at level 3 if you had a Shard of Masterful Craftsmanship I, which lowers the minimum level of an item by two. Technically, today’s list could include any item you could craft for a level 5 character, provided you put a Shard of Masterful Craftsmanship I on it. Since that complicates the list a lot, I thought I’d stick to a “no Shard of Masterful Craftsmanship” rule. Feel free to add this shard to your items, and make even stronger stuff!

1. Goggles - Attack Bonus +1: Increasing your attack bonus is kind of a no-brainer, since it means you’ll hit things more often! When you level up a bit more, you can add something like Underwater Action to this item, or upgrade to Attack Bonus +2!

2. Helmet - Resistance +2: A Resistance item will give you a +2 to all Saving Throws! You can craft even higher bonuses for a level 3 character if you want to set aside room for Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and/or Enchantment Save items, but this one item will take care of all of them!

3. Necklace - Constitution +2: I don’t know about you, but being alive is nice. Since more hit points equals more alive-ness, and Constitution equals more hit points, crafting a Constitution item is high on my “to-do” list! There are several places you can craft Constitution onto an item (see our recent column about that here), but for today’s column let’s put it here.

4. Trinket - Melee/Ranged Alacrity 10%: Whether you go for Melee or Ranged Alacrity will depend a lot on whether you use a sword or bow! Either way, 10% faster is better, and at level 3, swinging faster and defeating monsters more quickly can make a big difference!

5. Cloak - Feather Falling of Jump +3: Most of today’s items only have one shard on them, due to the need to keep the minimum level of these items low. This cloak, though, has two shards on it! Feather Falling is an essential item for virtually every character, and a bit of Jump doesn’t hurt either.

6. Belt - Disease Immunity of Light Fortification: This will help you avoid “one shot death” at the hands of a nasty troll or ogre, and avoid the dreaded “mummy rot!”

7. Ring 1 - Strength +2: Just about any class can use a boost to Strength. Yeah, you could work out every day, eat stuff with lots of protein and carbs, and do lots of push-ups, but you could also just equip a ring! I don’t know about you, but I’d rather save that workout time for more eating!

8. Gloves - Dexterity +2: Similar to Strength, Dexterity is a great stat for many classes. You can learn more about character stats in generalhere!

9. Boots - Striding +10%: Get there 10% faster!

10. Ring 2 - Reflex Save +4: This doesn’t stack with the Resistance +2 bonus we made earlier, but a higher reflex save can make a big difference when trying to avoid trap damage, so a little redundancy doesn’t hurt here. Also, it helps you avoid trap damage, so it’s all right to double-up a bit.

11. Bracers - (Skill Bonus): Okay, I’m going to cheat on this one and not offer a specific bonus. The idea is to put a bonus to whatever skill you use the most in this slot! You can add a +5 to whatever skill you want and equip the item at level 3. Concentration, Intimidate, Search, Jump - it’s up to you!

12. Armor - Unbalancing of Invulnerability: At level 3, armor class is less of an issue than it’ll be in later levels, so it’s okay in general to leave off the + bonus to your armor for now. Unbalancing will make it easier to hit enemies, and Invulnerability is an extremely useful Suffix property that gives you five points of Damage Reduction against anything non-magical! When you level up a bit, you can add a +1 or +2 to the armor, whatever you need.

13. Weapon 1 - +1 Rapier of Bleeding: Our first weapon does an additional 1 to 8 points of damage to anything that can bleed, which is a lot of stuff at lower levels (NOT skeletons, of course, they already did their bleeding before you got there, that’s probably why they’re dead, ya know?)

14. Weapon 2 - +1 Screaming Rapier: Our off-hand weapon does an additional 1 to 6 points of sonic damage on every hit! You may notice that for both weapons I’ve left either a Prefix or Suffix off; the idea is that you can keep this weapon with you a bit longer by crafting the missing Prefix or Suffix when you level up a bit!

15. Ammo - +1 Holy Arrows: Any arrows are fine, really, but to stick to the theme of today’s column I crafted up some +1 Holy Arrows. These are pretty good “general purpose” arrows to have around, since you can do an extra 2 to 12 points of damage to any evil enemy!

You can make every one of these items provided you have an Arcane school level of at least 33, an Elemental level of 47, and a Divine level of 34.

That’s it! I hope today’s column gives you ideas the next time you decide to look at your gear to figure out what you need, and what you need to make!

I hope you enjoyed this installment of “Crafting with…Courtney!” Don’t forget to click here as well to check out our entire Crafting Cookbookin the DDO Compendium!

Dungeons & Dragons Online® interactive video game (c) 2017 Standing Stone Games LLC. All other elements (c) 2017 HASBRO, Inc. Standing Stone Games and the Standing Stone Games logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Standing Stone Games LLC. Dungeons & Dragons Online and Wizards of the Coast and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC and are used with permission. HASBRO and its logo are trademarks of HASBRO, Inc. and are used with permission.